This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The Mercy of Gods will be released on August 6, 2024.
Despite the fact that I’ve read just one book of The Expanse (it’s been on my “I swear I’ll get around to the sequels” list for four years at this point), The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey was still one of my most-anticipated books of the year, entirely on the strength of co-author Daniel Abraham’s fantasy writing. I’ve read six of his novels. I’ve rated them all five stars. The Long Price Quartet remains one of the best series I’ve ever read. So if he’s co-authoring a new sci-fi, I’m in.
The Mercy of Gods tells of humanity—unaware of the origin of their species after untold generations on the planet of Anjiin—being conquered by the alien Carryx and being made to prove their worth merely to stave off their species’ destruction. The ensemble cast features quite a few human scientists, along with epigraphs and the occasional in-story snippet from alien perspectives.
The Mercy of Gods is firmly medium-length for contemporary SFF, but it lingers longer than one might expect on life before the arrival of the Carryx, introducing the main cast and diving into the fraught academic politics that aren’t entirely put to the side when the aliens arrive. This opening segment is well-written, but it does demand some patience from the reader, as the shape of the central conflict doesn’t begin to come clear until well into the story.
When that conflict does come clear, it’s a book that’s hard to put down—one that tells an engrossing story in the short term while putting the pieces in place for the larger series. Right now, it’s just about staying alive in the face of a staggeringly powerful enemy whose ideology and instructions are rarely entirely clear. And surviving means rising to enormous professional challenges while dealing both with various psychological distresses and with other competitors trying just as strenuously to prove themselves.
I’m not sure if I’d call the pacing a weakness or whether it’s just a necessary tradeoff when telling a story that’s designed as part of a larger series. But one thing that I would call a weakness is the characterization. It’s not bad—there’s not anything here that I would say is bad—but it doesn’t have the same kind of life as other elements of the story. Each of the main cast has their own personality and their own struggles, but their perspectives still tend to run together, and while it’s clear who will be the main character going forward, there’s not one character that really stands out and demands the reader’s attention. There’s time for that to develop over the course of the series, but it’s not there in book one.
On the other hand, the story does well developing a genuinely strange alien perspective. I wouldn’t call it unfathomable from a human perspective—in fact, I couldn’t help but find the Carryx deeply Nietzschean—but it’s both cohesive enough that it feels like a plausible way of living and unusual enough that the human characters struggle immensely to piece it together. And so the Carryx provide depth to the worldbuilding while also setting up plenty of plot-related excitement.
Overall, there’s a lot to like about The Mercy of Gods. Character-focused readers may want a bit more from the cast, and it does demand a little bit of patience from the audience, but it brings plenty of excitement and sets up what promises to be a thrilling series. The first book may not guarantee greatness, but it certainly leaves open the possibility.
Recommended if you like: alien invasions, survival stories.
Can I use it for Bingo? It’s hard mode for Multi-POV, Survival, and Character with a Disability, and it’s also Space Opera that is Published in 2024, includes Dreams, and is First in a Series.
Overall rating: 15 of Tar Vol’s 20. Four stars on Goodreads.